Laughter

Laughter is the philosophical and theological fulcrum on which the entire plot of The Name of the Rose turns. It is not merely a theme but the very object of the novel's central crime: the suppression and destruction of Aristotle's lost second book of the Poetics, a treatise on comedy. The debate over whether laughter is a divine gift or a diabolical snare, a tool for truth or a weapon against faith, drives the intellectual conflict between William of Baskerville and Jorge of Burgos, and ultimately explains the series of murders that devastate the abbey.

The Debate on the Licitness of Laughter

The conflict over laughter is first staged in the scriptorium, where the monks debate the morality of the grotesque marginalia in Adelmo of Otranto's illuminations. Jorge of Burgos, the blind and ancient librarian, condemns these images as a perversion of God's creation, a world turned upside down where "dogs flee before the hare, and deer hunt the lion." He argues that Christ never laughed, and that laughter is a sign of the fool, a force that "foments doubt" and undermines the authority of the Church. Venantius of Salvemec counters by citing Aristotle, who in the known part of the Poetics spoke of witticisms and metaphors as instruments for revealing truth. The debate escalates when Venantius mentions that Aristotle devoted a whole second book to laughter, a book that is lost. Jorge dismisses this, claiming that if it had not been found, it was because Providence did not want futile things glorified. This exchange reveals the central ideological rift: for Jorge, laughter is a threat to the absolute, unquestioning faith that sustains the Church's power; for the younger scholars, it is a legitimate mode of inquiry and a path to a different kind of truth.

William's Defense of Laughter as a Rational and Therapeutic Force

William of Baskerville, the Franciscan detective, consistently defends laughter against Jorge's attacks. He argues that "laughter is proper to man" and a sign of his rationality, citing authorities from Quintilian to John of Salisbury. He proposes that laughter is a good medicine, like baths, to treat melancholy and other afflictions of the body. More provocatively, William suggests that laughter can be a suitable instrument for confound the wicked and make their foolishness evident, citing the example of Saint Lawrence joking with his executioners on the gridiron. He challenges Jorge's assertion that Christ never laughed, pointing to Christ's witty replies to the Pharisees and his wordplay with Peter ("Tu es petrus"). For William, laughter is not opposed to truth but can be a vehicle for it, a way of seeing things from another direction and breaking the grip of rigid, fearful authority. This position aligns him with the empirical, questioning spirit of his mentor Roger Bacon and the Franciscan tradition of engaging with the world.

The Forbidden Book: Aristotle's Poetics II as the Ultimate Weapon

The novel's central mystery is the identity and content of the forbidden book hidden in the finis Africae, the secret room of the library. William deduces that it is the lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics, which deals with comedy and laughter. The fragments he reads confirm that Aristotle defined comedy as a mimesis of base and ridiculous actions, arguing that laughter, by inspiring the pleasure of the ridiculous, produces a catharsis of that passion. The book teaches that the ridiculous is born from likening the best to the worst, from deceit, from the impossible, and from violation of the laws of nature. For Jorge, this is the most dangerous book in existence. He believes that if laughter were elevated to an art and a philosophy, it would teach men to laugh at the Incarnation, to cancel fear of God, and to overturn the entire hierarchical order of the world. The book, he argues, would transform the peasant's temporary, bodily release into a permanent, intellectual weapon, making the "operation of the belly" into an "operation of the brain" and unleashing a new, destructive aim to destroy death through redemption from fear.

Jorge's Confession and the Destruction of the Book

In the climactic confrontation in the finis Africae, Jorge confesses to William that he has spent forty years protecting the library and suppressing the book. He poisoned the pages of the Aristotle manuscript, knowing that any curious reader who moistened his fingers to turn the pages would ingest a lethal poison. This is how Venantius, Berengar, and Malachi died. Jorge explains his motive: the book could teach that "freeing oneself of the fear of the Devil is wisdom" and could strike "the Luciferine spark that would set a new fire to the whole world." He sees himself as the hand of God, acting to prevent a blasphemy that would destroy the Church. When William confronts him, Jorge, in a final act of defiance, tears the pages from the book and devours them, then knocks over a lamp, starting the fire that destroys the entire library. His act is a desperate attempt to seal the forbidden knowledge forever, even at the cost of his own life and the abbey's treasure.

Thematic Significance: Laughter, Truth, and the Order of the World

The conflict over laughter in The Name of the Rose is a conflict over the nature of truth and the proper relationship between humanity and the divine. Jorge represents a worldview in which truth is fixed, absolute, and must be protected from doubt and inquiry. Laughter, for him, is the enemy of this truth because it introduces ambiguity, irony, and the possibility of seeing the world from a different, potentially subversive, perspective. William, by contrast, embodies a nascent humanism that values doubt, inquiry, and the use of reason to understand the world. He sees laughter not as a threat to truth but as a tool for arriving at it, a way of cutting through pretense and authority. The novel ultimately suggests that the greatest danger is not laughter itself, but the fanatical certainty that would kill to suppress it. William's final, bitter reflection—that he discovered the truth by following a false pattern, and that there is no order in the universe—undermines even his own rational method, leaving the reader with the haunting image of a world where the only remaining truth is the name of the rose, a name that holds nothing but itself.